The only short circuit I have seen Oracle do, relates to NVL vs COALESCE.

SELECT NVL(1,1/0) FROM DUAL
SELECT COALESCE(1,1/0) FROM DUAL

NVL evaluates both sides and throws an error, the coalesce doesn't.

It also looks like decode is doing the same thing:

SELECT decode(1,1,9,2,1/0) FROM DUAL

It isn't evaluating the second part so avoids throwing an error.

On the SQL Server optimizer, I know that the query engine can rewrite these kind of statements and cause problems with short circuit examples like this so as a general rule - you should never rely on a short circuit within your logic - I do not know if the same applies to Oracle - I suspect it will.